Willem Dafoe's praise for Robert Eggers

Willem Dafoe signed up to 'The Lighthouse' because he wanted to work with Robert Eggers.

The four-time Academy Award nominee was a huge fan of Egger's 2016 movie 'The Witch' and jumped at the change to collaborated with the director on a new project.

He told Variety: "I was attracted to Robert Eggers, the director, after seeing 'The Witch'. He presented me the script, and I called him immediately and said, 'Let's do this.' For my character, there's a lot of things to learn. The script had a beautiful, elevated language with rhythm and music to it. The story's scenes are fascinating."

Willem, 64, acknowledged that people can view 'The Lighthouse' - which co-stars Robert Pattinson as Ephraim Winslow, a lighthouse keeper who works alongside one man Thomas Wake (Dafoe), on an isolated island in the late 1800s - in many different ways and he welcomes all interpretations.

He said: "Like anything that's complex, it's going to mean different things to different people depending on what your concerns are and where you are in your life. For me, it's literal: Two men arrive at this place and slowly, because of their entrapment and lack of comforts, become stripped of their beliefs. And then they have to deal with each other and what they have. It's also very involved with the nature of identity and power and how people survive under the condition of being human. In some respects, it's a very masculine movie. For some people, they're going to relate to it as a movie about a couple or a nightmare roommate. Others can view it as a movie about a boss and an employee and still very much about a father and a son."